ir Gifts
Seven years after my marriage, tsent mysel..,
Chapter 7
Outside, the snow had started falling again, making it unrealistic for Ethan to head back down the mountain tonight.
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I turned around, poured him a hot coffee, and pulled out a chair for him.
The cabin’s warmth provided a comfortable contrast to the biting cold
outside.
Ethan glanced around the room. “This place,” he said, “has your touch. It’s unmistakably Lila’s style.”
I merely smiled at his words, offering no reply.
“Aren’t you curious why I came here?
Chapter 7 pressed.
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I asked, “Why did you come here, then?”
Ethan was caught off guard and then laughed. A laugh so bitter it brought tears to the corners of his eyes. “You… You seem warm and inviting on the outside, but no one can ever truly get close to you. Not even me. I’ve been by your side for over a decade, yet I’ve never made it into your heart.”
I took a sip of coffee and said nothing. My silence might as well have been an admission.
I thought, “If we had married back then, I would have accepted Ethan–flaws and all, and stayed by his side through everything. Once I choose someone, I don’t change my mind. But he chose
Chapter 7
‘what ifs‘ go, just like the snow outside. There was no point in looking back.
“I came to see how you’re doing,” Ethan said. “Asher has been searching for you everywhere. He refuses to believe you’re gone. To be honest, neither do I. You’ve always been someone who cherishes life too much to throw it away.”
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your
I pondered his words as I gazed at the snowstorm swirling beyond the cabin’s windows.
Back when Ethan and I were just children growing up in the orphanage, we were bullied relentlessly.
It was unavoidable. Everyone there wanted to be adopted. Every single one of
us had been abandoned, and we craved to be loved.
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But love was a rare commodity, a scarce resource. To survive, we had to fight
against each other for it.
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One day, it might be the director’s attention. The next was the favor of potential adoptive parents. And the day after, perhaps the approval of some philanthropist visiting the orphanage.
No one could truly understand the scars from those childhood battles.
Ethan was right about one thing. I did cherish my life. Even when they stripped me of my clothes and held me down in the snow, leaving my skin bruised and blue from the cold, I never once thought about ending it.
Even when the Hayes family took me in, they always focused on Serena’s tantrums
me like family despite the blood we shared.
Even when Ethan, my childhood companion, who had grown up with me for over a decade, chose to marry Serena on the eve of what should have been our
wedding, I still didn’t think about dying.
But Asher’s betrayal was different. It broke me in ways I hadn’t thought possible. Maybe because I had let my guard down and my heart had opened for him.
So, when I realized I was never his priority, never his “one and only,” that I was just a compromise, a convenience… it shattered me.
That was the first time I had ever
seriously considered ending it all.
would ever share with Ethan. If he didn’t believe me, so be it. I no longer had the energy to seek his understanding.
All I wanted now was to live my own life, free of the entanglements of others.
In this world filled with so many people, there must be a way to live just for myself, from beginning to end. It was possible to live well that way.
It was just that I still didn’t know at this
moment.
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